The show was called Leo, the Lion, and I was hooked. None of my friends were into this particular cartoon, but I always made sure never to miss it. I really enjoyed animal stories as a kid, especially stories about extraordinary animals, and Leo's adventures in his animal kingdom had me enthralled. I think I was about nine or ten.

The Leo I remember, however, was an adult lion, king of the jungle for a long time, and with a family of his own. I watched it for about a year or two, then it seemed to just vanish from television altogether - I never came across it again. The first real hint I got that I hadn't dreamed the whole thing up was about three years ago, when the Lion King/Kimba debates began.

I had already seen and very much enjoyed Disney's lavish Lion King, but not long after the film came out there was a problem - people who remembered a cartoon that had first been a comic strip, about a scrappy white lion cub named Kimba, claimed that there were just too many similarities between the two stories to be a coincidence. Now, I'm not going to waste space here giving folks the low down and dirty on this suspected plagiarism (there will be some links at the end of this page which can lead you to more information about it), but I will say this - at first I didn't buy it. Then I read more about the old Kimba, the White Lion (original Japanese: The Jungle Emperor) cartoons and I have to say it looks pretty bad for Disney in some ways (I had always assumed that The Lion King was based somewhat loosely on Shakespeare's Hamlet; and so it may be). Kimba was a lion prince due to inherit the throne, he had an evil uncle who betrayed his father so that he could assume the kingship, and a dead parent appeared to him in a cloud urging him to right the wrong. The conflict ended with an adult Kimba roaring out his triumphant battle-cry from a high, jutting rock while his subjects watched from below.

Hmmmmm.....

Like I said, I'm not going into it any more than that. There was a lot more to the old Kimba cartoons than that particular thread, anyway. What drew my attention when I saw documentation of this lawsuit online, was a still from each of the two cartoons lined up side by side - one with Disney's Simba perched on a high rock, the other with Tezuka's Kimba in the same pose. The similarities did not strike me so much as did the familiarity of Tezuka's lion. I was sure I was looking at the "Leo" of my childhood memories. Determined to prove my theory and armed with a name - Osamu Tezuka - I began web-surfing in my spare time, trying to track down my old pal Leo.

Unfortunately, the information I was able to glean was pathetically little - Tezuka's English-speaking admirers, though ardent, seem to be few (at least online). It took me several years to find out that Leo, the Lion, was indeed a creation of Tezuka's, though not the same Kimba cartoon that people remember from the sixties. It seems there were two series - the early one, which covered Kimba's years as a cub, and the later one (early 80's), which spanned some of his adult years. The difference in the lion's name was explainable on two counts - in Japan, Tezuka merely named his character Leo. When the first series was originally translated in the sixties, the American producers decided "Leo" was too redundant a name for the lion, so they took the Swahili word for lion - simba - replaced the "s" with a "k", thus giving the character a more original-sounding name. It was two decades later and by a different company that the second series was translated, and so Leo remained Leo, and the rest of the old characters had different names entirely.

While much of anime is geared toward adults (see my Gatchaman page), a great deal of Tezuka's work seems to be directed at children. In my search for Leo, I was delighted to come across titles and characters of movies I had managed to stumble across by accident over a few rainy Sundays as a kid, such as Unico and Mermaid. Back then I only knew I enjoyed them, but seeing them now and realizing they were created by the same artist, I can see recurring themes. There were strong elements of the idealistic in Tezuka's work.

For instance, Kimba was a "do-gooder," who also had a bold plan to turn all animals into friends by making all animals into vegetarians (Disney did not go there). To be sure, a lot of the animals thought he was nuts, but by the time the second series rolled around it appeared to be a done deal. In The Fantastic Adventures of Unico, a series I enjoyed as a unicorn-loving child (there were two additional installments to this series which I have not seen), the title character's main purpose in life was to make people happy - a plan that kept him constantly on the move, ducking from the gods, who don't like to see mortals too happy during their lifetimes (a common belief in some Eastern religions).

As seen by Unico (another adorable critter), Tezuka gave his characters problems with which they had to deal. Kimba's parents were killed, his father by a hunter, his mother trapped in a cage on a ship that sank at sea (Kimba was small enough to squeeze through the bars and escape). The adult Kimba (Leo) has something of a temper which got him into trouble, and his son (also white) was rather irresponsible while young. Tezuka liked complex characters with multiple sides, even in this child-aimed animation.

Tezuka was said to be a great admirer of Disney, with his favorite movie being Bambi. Although I have not seen this film, I was told that his Legend of the Forest, made two years before his death in 1989, was an unspoken tribute to the American animation studio. If this is the case, it's even sadder to think that Disney may have been so liberal about lifting Tezuka's Kimba story without acknowledgment. But one thing Tezuka has over Disney is a freshness unimpaired by gross commercialism.

Tezuka's most famous character is reputed to be Astro Boy, or Tetsuwan Atom (1963). It also happens to be one show I haven't seen yet, so I can't tell you much about it. Hopefully there will be more databases in the future with information about Tezuka and his works which helped to raise anime to an art form. For now, you may find the following links helpful:

The Work of Osamu Tezuka
The pictures of Unico and Astro Boy used on this page were adapted from images found on this site. For full versions, and other images, visit Judy's Osamu Tezuka site.

Machiko Satonaka's Open Letter to Disney

Robocat's Kimba Gallery
The picture of Kimba the cub on this page was adapted from an image found on this site. For a full version, and other images, visit Robocat's site.

Nicky Guthrie's Kimba Gallery
This site includes 34 images of Kimba. The image of Kimba and his friends was adapted from this page.

Tezuka Osamu World
This is the English, non-flash version of the official web-site for Osamu Tezuka (you can reach the Japanese and flash versions from links at the top of this page). The site is very comprehensive, covering Tezuka's career in manga and anime, and also includes personal information and photos. The English text lacks fluency, but is informative.